It is difficult to get in touch with individuals, when they are away from home or the office. When an individual is not home or in the office, a phone call made to the individual's home or office goes unanswered or is answered by an answering machine. Thus, direct contact is not made with the individual.
Several methods have been developed to allow a subscriber remote from home to receive a telephone call made to the subscriber's home number. Available methods are call forwarding, remote call forwarding and personal reach service.
Call forwarding requires the subscriber to identify a number at which he can be reached so that calls to the subscriber's number can be forwarded to the identified number. That is, the subscriber must remember to inform the telephone network where he is going. Thus, each time a subscriber leaves his home, he must inform the network of a call forwarding number. If the subscriber moves from one remote number associated with a location to another location, he cannot be reached without first returning home and informing the network. Accordingly, the subscriber is often unreachable.
Remote call forwarding differs from call forwarding in that the subscriber informs the telephone network where she is located after arriving at a new location. Consequently, the ability to reach the subscriber is improved over regular call forwarding. With remote call forwarding, to remain reachable, the subscriber must update the call forwarding telephone number associated with each location every time she moves from one remote location to another. Thus, the subscriber not only may have to update her location frequently, but also must remember to update her location.
A personal reach service provides a subscriber with a special personal reach telephone number different from the subscriber's home telephone number. To contact a person using a personal reach service, the calling party must know and use the subscriber's personal reach number. Thus, an individual using the personal reach service has two phone numbers, a personal reach number and a home number, requiring a calling party to have access to the reach number and remember both the home and reach numbers.
There are several problems associated with each of the above-mentioned alternatives to contacting a subscriber who is away from home or the office. In each of the existing methods, the memory of a party contributes to whether a subscriber can be contacted. For example, with the personal reach service, the calling party must remember two numbers to contact a subscriber. Also, with remote and regular call forwarding schemes, the subscriber needs to remember to update his location. Also, none of the above existing systems allow the calling party to talk to a party at the home or office, a remote party or both. Each only allows the calling party to reach the remote subscriber.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a scheme which permits a calling party to call a subscriber's home or office and seamlessly reach the subscriber regardless of whether the subscriber is home or in the office without requiring the subscriber to inform the telephone network of a forwarding number or a remote location.